Another beautiful morning in ‘paradise’! The heat and humidity are so oppressive that we have “gone commando”, why peel off two layers when one is enough! One source I looked up said that the term of going without underwear originated during the Vietnam war among soldiers who ditched their ‘tighty whiteys’ to alleviate the fungal infections they were getting from the excessive humidity! I have a whole new respect for Vietnam war era soldiers!

We decided to take a longtail boat into Ao Nang to explore the urban scene.

There’s a great breeze as we zoomed along the cliffs!

We walked up the long main road, stopping at a pharmacy for some cold medicine. I woke up with a sore throat this morning and did a COVID test that was negative (yay!), so I just picked up a cold virus.

There must be a public bus system since there are several monkey themed bus stops!

We then meandered along the waterfront, stopped for pizza and beer then continued to the Monkey Trail, a short hike over a forested outcrop to another small beach.

Near the entrance to the trail is a shrine to the many-armed Goddess Durga. There are Hindu shrines everywhere, decorated with flowers and incense sticks burning. 

The boardwalk and rickety stairs of the Monkey Trail were crowded, with people, no monkeys to be seen! There is a great view of Ao Nang beach from the trail. It’s hard to imagine all the crowds, resorts, restaurants and shops down there, the jungle hides it all well! 

We caught another longtail boat back to the calm peaceful atmosphere at our resort and cooled off in the pool with some beach drinks!

This morning as we walked to and from the restaurant dining room I wondered about the history of this resort site. The rows of coconut palms made me think it was originally a palm plantation. But then I know nothing about coconut palms! These must be mature trees since there are signs warning of falling coconuts! It turns out that it takes only 5 to 10 years for a coconut palm to mature and depending on the species and climatic conditions, it can start bearing fruit in as little as 3 years, and continue producing fruit for up to 70 years! So this could be a young or an old plantation! I did some further research and discovered a different story altogether! It all starts with those climbers we saw yesterday. Thirty years ago Tonsai Beach was “discovered” by the rock climbing community and the cliffs afforded challenging routes. A village on the beach was established that catered to the transient climbers and yoga aficionados, the backpacking set, the retro-hippies of the 90’s. Then in 2014 the beachfront land was sold to a hotel chain with the intention of building a mega resort. The village of Tonsai was forced to move inland and a concrete wall was built around the beachfront land. Tonsai Displaced 2014. We finally noticed the wall around the plantation/resort and looking at Google maps we saw a road, a few accommodations and restaurants sited behind the wall. We decided to go check it out on our way to making arrangements for our longtail boat ride back to Ao Nang.

“The Wall” the resort side looking into the coconut grove, and the ‘village side’ decorated with art!

According to this article; Tonsai 2014 vs. 2019, work on the mega resort was never even started by 2019 and the residents and visitors used the wall as a canvas for their art and protest! Life here still had the laid back vibe of backpackers and climbers apparently.

A great and simple guide for life! I especially like the quote “If you don’t have enough time stop watching TV”!

We walked up the dirt road, passing a few open air restaurants set between falling down shacks and at least one still-operating hostel type accommodation.

The road was deteriorated and we wondered if a storm had damaged the area.

This hotel/bar is definitely out of business!

The road narrowed, then became a path as the buildings became more rustic and dispersed and seemingly empty.

As we meandered up the road we were joined by a young lady on her way through the forest to Railay Beach. This is the 2nd route to get there other than the beach front hike! We followed her lead as the road turned to a path. We spotted a lizard or two, but no monkeys or tropical birds.

After an hour of walking the forest opened up and we came to some nicer, more up to date accommodations at the edge of the Railay Beach community.

We made it back to Railay Beach, the longer jungle route! Again we revived with the help of some ice cold beer, chips and water. According to; Rock Climbing Tonsai 2021, the climbing on Tonsai and Railay Beaches is still awesome, but a lot of the amenities have moved to Railay Beach. Rather than return the way we came we decided to make a loop and return via the beach route we used yesterday. As we walked through town we were rewarded with an encounter with the local monkeys; long tailed macaques.

These are the first we saw of the troop. All the monkeys were busy feeding on wild food (except for the one with the water bottle!) and were not aggressive to the people passing by admiring and taking pictures. There were several infants being carried by their mothers.

We spotted this mother and nursing infant farther down the street. Love those Spock ears!

A panorama of Railay Beach, more ‘beachy’ than Tonsai which is jagged rocks at low tide. Maybe that’s the reason the mega resort never came to be!

We made it back to Tonsai Beach, showered and got in the pool finally! And treated ourselves to coconut beach drinks while the late afternoon thunderstorm came through!

Later I learned from a resort employee that Covid-19 basically killed the businesses behind the resort wall and the proprietors just walked away to let the jungle take the land back! I further deduced that this resort wasn’t even built until at least 2020!

The morning sun, rising behind us, cast a beautiful glow onto the cliff face and the distant island in the Andaman Sea.

As we walked to breakfast we heard loud hooting calls in the forest and asked the staff what was making the noise. They replied that the calls were made by monkeys in the forest behind the resort! After breakfast we strolled the grounds, enjoying the beauty and wondering how we will spend the day!

The pool looks very inviting, but we have a more adventurous plan for the day.

The limestone cliffs surround the property and the forest harbors the aforementioned noisy monkeys, lizards and tropical birds. We were warned when we checked in to lock the doors of the bungalow whenever we leave, not as protection against human thieves, but against the destruction the monkeys would cause if they got inside! Apparently they’ve learned to open unlocked doors!

We decided to hike the short trail along the beach and over a forested rocky ledge to the neighboring slightly larger Railay Beach, another beach accessible only by water or 2 trails from Tonsai Beach. The Beach hike can be accomplished only at low tide which was just an hour after our breakfast, so we packed a backpack and started our walk!

We passed another resort tucked up against the cliff as we walked to the end of Tonsai beach. We will cross through the forest that juts out into the water at the base of the cliff.

A 20 minute hike through the forest and a short climb down some rocks puts us on Railay Beach!

The number of longtail boats at the beach attest to Railay Beach’s popularity as a day trip from Ao Nang!

This beach seems bigger than Tonsai beach, with many more resorts and restaurants in a several hundred meter square shopping district! As we wandered along the main shopping street we spotted a tree that had been blown down during yesterday’s thunderstorm!

Luckily there was very little damage, the branches narrowly missing the huts lining the street. There were several workers with chain saws and ropes carefully cutting and cleaning up the debris.

Meanwhile, the commerce across the street continued! Thailand decriminalized marijuana in June 2022, the first Asian country to do so, but a new coalition conservative government is eying rescinding the laws allowing recreational sale and use of marijuana.

We continued the short distance to the end of the road, passing caves eroded into the limestone karst geology.

There are several caves around Railay Beach, some free to explore, others charge a fee.

The heat and humidity are oppressive! It’s almost as if the very rock is melting! We were reaching our limits hiking in the heat so we found some beers to quench our thirst along with several bottles of water and some salty chips! Thus revived we made our way back over the trail, luckily with the tide still out!

The trail on the Tonsai Beach side, along the cliff face where climbers were scaling the wall (not in the picture)! How they can do that in the heat is beyond us!

We repaired to our air conditioned bungalow to shower and recover from our adventure!

We woke pretty early and opened the curtains to this sunrise view!

It looks like we have a water view, but if you look closer the whiteness just below the sunrise is actually the corrugated metal roof of a neighboring quonset type building!

We showered and headed down to the buffet breakfast, ate our fill and returned to the room to shower again! It’s the humidity! I’ve been in August Minnesota ‘Mississippi-drippy’ humidity but this is a new scale of moisture! Our first order of business was to get some local currency, then use it to buy some lighter weight clothes! The main street of Ao Nang is lined with open air restaurants, tourist vacation clothing stores, currency exchanges, tourist operators offering packages to islands, beaches, tours to various sites, open air massage businesses, etc. We wandered around, biding our time until we could take a longtail boat around a rocky headland to the resort we will be staying at for the next 5 nights.

Walking down the waterfront we passed several resorts with restaurants.

While I got an iconic Thai massage Robert settled next door at a restaurant for a beer. Then we joined the other visitors and caught a longtail boat.

The resort on Tonsai beach can only be reached by boat!

Tinidee Hideaway Resort! A very peaceful, beautiful beachfront resort. No cars, but you can occasionally hear the motors of the longtail boats. No plastic water bottles, but a great purified water system with a pitcher. Individual bungalows set in a coconut grove and a restaurant/bar serving all day 7am to 10pm!

A collage of our first impressions of our idyllic resort and bungalow!

We unpacked, showered again and headed to the restaurant for our first meal during which the threatening rain finally broke and poured for the duration of our meal! It cleared and we explored a little bit of the surrounding limestone cliffs and coconut grove.Good night!

A very early wake-up alarm this morning! We had to catch the 5:26am 1.5 hour commuter train into Sydney Central Station then buy tickets for the 15 minute subway ride to the airport. We had a few hours at the Sydney airport to go through security, find our gate and have a bite to eat for breakfast. We boarded and settled in for the 9.5 hour flight that crosses Australia in a diagonal from southeast to north central, basically Sydney to Darwin, then over the Timor Sea, Indonesia, the equator, the Gulf of Thailand and into Bangkok! It was so bright outside that we had the window shade down most of the time, but early in the flight we did see that we were flying back over where we had just been yesterday, the Blue Mountains!

Somewhere down there along a cliff face are the Three Sisters!

We peeked outside again as we approached Bangkok, and this is the most we saw of the iconic Thai city!

The clouds building in the distance portended the rest of our day!

At the Bangkok airport we had to go from the international terminal through many corridors and another security checkpoint into the domestic terminal to catch our 1.3 hour flight to Krabi Town, the transport hub for Krabi district which has become a tourist mecca for the islands, beaches, limestone geography and inexpensive cost of vacationing! We arrived at Krabi airport well after dark and in the midst of a torrential downpour and were grateful that we had pre-ordered a taxi from the hotel where we are staying! Our bags loaded, we settled in for the 50 minute drive to Ao Nang (pronounced ‘ow Nong’) through flooding streets and past intrepid motorbike drivers wearing flip-flops and plastic ponchos billowing around them as they dodged the puddles and the spray from the many taxis and vans zooming down the streets! The rain let up when we arrived at the hotel and we checked in and immediately went to our room, cranked the air conditioning up and crawled into bed!